The semantic web as a science accelerator

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THE SEMANTIC WEB AS A SCIENCE ACCELERATOR

Frank van Harmelen

Water, Water Everywhereand not a drop to drinkRime of the Ancient MarinerSamuel Taylor Coleridge, 1797

Data, Data Everywhereand not a thought to thinkAverage Scientist, 2013

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THE SCIENTIST’S PROBLEM

Too much unintegrated data: from a variety of incompatible

sources no standard naming convention each with a custom browsing and

querying mechanism (no common interface)

poor interaction with other data sources

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WHAT ARE THE DATA SOURCES?

Flat FilesURLsProprietary DatabasesPublic DatabasesSpreadsheetsEmails…

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Not just the Big Sciences• Archeology• Chemistry• Genomics, proteomics, ... (bio/life-sciences)• Communication science• Social history• Linguistics• Bio-diversity• Environmental sciences (climate studies)• ....• libraries (KB), archives (beeld&geluid)

One dataset per sitea new database each month

historical datalaymen data

international data

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"WEB OF DATA" (TBL)

recipe:expose databases on the web, use RDF, integrate

meta-data from:•expressing DB schema semantics in machine interpretable ways

enable integration and unexpected re-use

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBSdYi4EY3s

P1. Give all things a nameCOMMIT/

P2. Relations form a graph between things

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P3. The names are addresses on the Web

x T

[<x> IsOfType <T>]

differentowners & locations

<analgesic>

P1+P2+P3 = Giant Global GraphCOMMIT/

P4. explicit & formal semantics

• assign types to things• assign types to relations• organise types in a hierarchy• empose constraints on

possible interpretations

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Examples of “semantics”

Semantics = predictable inference

Frank Lyndabirth-place

• Frank is person• birth-place relates

person to location

• birth-place relates 1 person to 1 location

• Lynda = Hazellowerbound upperbound

Hazelbirth-place

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> 25 billion sta

tements

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TWO EXAMPLES

Hubble

Linkitup

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EXAMPLE 2

Hubble

Linkitup

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DON’T JUST PUBLISH YOUR DATA

Turn your data into URLsExpose these on the WebLink them with existing

vocabularies

Better use for youBetter re-use for others

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Zoekmachine voor het semantic web: www.sindice.com